BY JENNIFER BRIER AND JORDAN “JT” TURNER
Despite decades of activism and change, LGBTQ college students continue to face challenges that affect their experiences with higher education. Some are similar to what straight and cis students confront on a daily basis—economic struggles that make paying for school a significant hardship or mental health issues that require access to culturally competent care—while others are more squarely about homophobia and transphobia—being kicked out of their family of origin for being queer or experiencing gender and/or sexual-based violence and bullying by their peers.
Photo courtesy of UIC GSC.
University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gender and Sexuality Center (GSC), whose history I recount in my new Academe article, “LGBTQ Students and the Liberation of College Campuses,” has long recognized the need to support LGBTQ students as they make the complicated and never linear transition to college. As the article demonstrates, this comes in the form of building spaces on campus for LGBTQ students to find comfort and thrive. Since writing the piece for Academe, I have learned about an innovative and timely project the GSC is developing. Tentatively titled the Family Acceptance Project, this campus-wide program seeks to reach out to and engage LGBTQ students’ families of origins and chosen families to address the social and emotional isolation LGBTQ students can experience in the transition to college.
To learn more about the program, I interviewed JT Turner, the director of UIC’s Gender and Sexuality Center, to learn more about their work and the origins of the project. Below is an excerpt of our conversation.
Can you tell me about where the idea for the family acceptance project comes from?
Often when asked about issues facing LGBTQ college students, my answer is about mental health, housing insecurity, and access to healthcare. These examples, while real and entirely pressing, can seem reductive in a world where queer and transgender youth and adults confront so many daily barriers to live and thrive. However, taken together they uncover a root issue which often doesn’t get addressed: the lack of acceptance of LGBTQ people by their families of origin.
Experiencing being on a college campus as an escape, some students refuse further engagement with their families of origin. But many of our students, including those who are first-generation college students, still desire and need family interaction. Not communicating with family members can create financial insecurity and mental health issues for many young people, especially people whose cultural backgrounds value deep familial connections.
What do you imagine is possible in the context of this project that is different from more traditional student support work?
Recently a father [who is a staff member at UIC] entered the GSC asking about resources for his youngest child because his older child was medically transitioning their gender identity and also considering enrolling at UIC. The staff member and his wife identify as LGBTQ allies, and see their home as a safe haven for LGBTQ young people who are friends of their children, but their child’s transition was something they needed support for. We shared suggestions for children’s books he could read with his six-year old son to build understanding, including My Awesome Uncle: A Children’s Book about Transgender Acceptance by Lise Frances, I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, and Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story about Gender and Friendship by Jessica Walton. By creating a space for dialogue and resource sharing, we saw our role in helping a potential UIC student and staff member have a more nurturing relationship and fostering both their success.
The Family Acceptance Project will encourage parents, siblings, and family members (including chosen family) to share uplifting and empowering messages with students at the same that it provides resources for people who might be struggling with acceptance of LGBTQ relatives or need more education. This project will be university-wide and multilingual so it speaks to the various communities we serve at UIC. We hope that as the project evolves, we can engage many different types of families.
We want to change the narrative on family acceptance and show that being queer or trans doesn’t have to mean isolation from family. For too many queer and trans people, familial relationships are severed. This project seeks to engage with the student’s family as it supports student’s personal and educational development.
Guest blogger Jennifer Brier is professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a 2019–20 Public Voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project. Jordan“JT”Turner is director of the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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